"... and did so by introducing something new. The touchscreen."
That's something that still annoys the crap out of me. Long before the iPhone, plenty of people were happily using PalmOS and Windows Mobile touchscreen devices and downloading apps for them. If he doesn't think the Palm Treos mattered, he wasn't paying attention.
Right. Speaking as an ex-happy-palmos and ex-angry-winmo user, what the iPhone introduced was the finger-usable (i.e. capacitive) touch screen, rather than the stylus-based (resistive) one - which genuinely was a paradigm shift.
I used my fingernail on my Treo all the time. I was happy to switch to capacitive touch but sometimes I miss the precision and ability to use any old stylus.
He clearly wasn't. There aren't that many Treo-mentions on DF pre-iPhone and almost all of those are about kicking the Windows Mobile 700w (which was justified to a point, but still...).
That's something that still annoys the crap out of me. Long before the iPhone, plenty of people were happily using PalmOS and Windows Mobile touchscreen devices and downloading apps for them. If he doesn't think the Palm Treos mattered, he wasn't paying attention.